Information may be sent between different computers by connecting the computers in a network. The Internet is a computer network which connects computers around the world. Another popular type of network, which is limited to a relatively small geographic area, is called a "local area network" or "LAN." Businesses also often use an "intranet" network, which is based on Internet technology but is geographically restricted.
FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate a problem encountered by many network users. LANs and intranets 10, 12 are relatively fast. That is, they can rapidly transmit large amounts of information internally. Portions of the Internet 14 are also relatively fast. However, connections 16 between LANs, and connections 18 between a LAN and the Internet 14, are typically much slower than connections within a given LAN or intranet 10, 12.
The connections 16 available today to interconnect two local area computer networks 10, 12 using a single serial link are analog and digital telephone lines, dedicated lines such as T1 and T3 connections, direct dial-in modems, and multiple channels sent over the same serial link such as Integrated Subscriber Digital Network (ISDN) connections. A T1 line gives about 1.544 Mb/s but costs a significant amount of money for the privilege of having a dedicated line. ISDN is also relatively fast and expensive. Other serial connections are much less expensive, but also much slower.
FIG. 2 shows one of the publicly discussed plans for connecting multiple geographically dispersed LANs 10, 12 using the Internet 14. The Internet 14 acts as part of the conduit for the transmission of data. The data from one LAN or intranet 10 is transmitted by way of a telephone connection 18 to a local Internet Service Provider ("ISP") 20 which then transmits the data over another connection 22 to the Internet 14. From the Internet 14, the data travels over a connection 24 to a remote ISP 26 that services the remote LAN 12. The ISP 26 transmits the data to the LAN 12 over a connection 28. The main advantage of this method is that there are no toll charges for the connections 18, 28, as they are made locally. In addition, a traveling sales representative of the company, for instance, can login to any local ISP and access the corporate LAN using a password.
However, a bottleneck in this scenario is the slow speed of conventional connections 18, 28 between the ISPs and the LANs where a modem or an inexpensive dedicated line is used. The slow nature of the connections 18, 28 between the ISP and the user prevents the user as well as the cyber community at large from utilizing the full commercial value of the Internet 14 such as for video on demand, downloading large data files or connecting corporate intranets 10, 12 over a wide area network.
One source of this limitation on cheap bandwidth is that for a given user each of the connections 16, 18, 28 relies on a single physical connection from one LAN or intranet 10 to the other LAN or intranet 12. Thus, a drawback of conventional technology is that the data bandwidth of the user's connection between the two LANs 10, 12 is limited by the total bandwidth of a single physical connection 16, 18, 28. While a company may have a high speed LAN 10 or 12 within its premises, its LAN 10 to corporate LAN 12 connectivity is slowed by the use of slow connections to the Internet 14 or other wide area networks ("WANs").
In spite of these drawbacks, the Internet 14 has become the information highway of choice, and corporations with several geographically distributed offices are planning to use the Internet 14 to connect their dispersed sites. They are also planning private Internet-like networks.
Thus, it would be an advancement in the art to provide a novel system and method for connecting LANs to allow faster but relatively inexpensive transmission of a given user's data.
It would be an additional advancement to provide such a system and method which can be used to connect a user on one LAN with another LAN through the Internet.
Such a method and system are disclosed and claimed herein.